If David Cameron had smoked cannabis, would he not simply have admitted it? It is hardly a novel admission, even among Conservative shadow cabinet members.
Tim Yeo, when Ann Widdecombe was in full pothead crackdown mode back in 2000, openly admitted that he had enjoyed smoking it while a student. Oliver Letwin naively said that a fellow student had once slipped some weed into his pipe - yes, a pipe - while he was a fresher.
So why the reticence, Mr Cameron? Wouldn't the odd spliff, if well in the past, fit neatly with your moderniser image, someone in touch with with modern Britons?
Mr Cameron's defence that he did things at university that he now wouldn't do seems less than frank. But then he must remember what happened to that other modernising candidate, Michael Portillo, back in 2001. Mr Portillo saw his challenge torpedoed by Conservative MPs after equivocal statements on the issue, when he was asked about a libertarian pamphlet by Peter Lilley, which suggested legalisation of cannabis and its sale in off-licences. In the end he lost out to Iain Duncan Smith by one vote, and it was probably the drugs that did for him.
Rightwing commentators - Alice Thomson in the Telegraph and Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail - have this morning latched onto Mr Cameron's failure to be candid about it, and demanded that he come clean.
All of this coincides with a Populus poll in the Times which puts Mr Cameron's support among Tory voters at 33%, up from 3% in early September. It shows David Davis's support as having nosedived after his underwhelming performance on the platform at Blackpool last Wednesday.
The faux shock about Mr Cameron's drug past could
influence the voting intentions of Cornerstone, the socially conservative group of Tory MPs dubbed Tombstone by the wags. Cornerstone members are meeting later to grill all the five leadership contenders. They were unlikely to back Cameron anyway, but the strong line from Liam Fox about drugs destroying lives should sway this rump group his way.
That might be enough to knock out Ken Clarke, who is being squeezed by the rise of David Cameron. He refuses to answer any questions about his own consumption of any drug, although it is difficult to imagine the former chancellor enjoying cocaine with his cigars.
This storm-in-a-bong could even reinforce Mr Cameron's message that the party needs to change. It seems hopelessy out of touch to be upset by the youthful indiscretions of a man who is a father of two, with a third on its way, and who is obviously not a drug fiend. It is also possible to be against drugs but to have taken them in your younger years, perhaps at university. How else can you know what you're talking about?
